Record and play in the Fieldfox N9912A

Hi, I would have to record long periods of time in the fieldfox to find an intermitent interference, so I would like to know if anyone can tell me what is the optimun way to set it up, like what IF, span, waterfall, etc.I have the interference option installed so to make a recording in a 8 Gb USB stick and how long would that allows me to record until full, also since the unit has two USB slots can I use two sticks and would it records one and then the other until full?, if anyone has been doing this and can help I will appreciate it. By the way I am very happy with this unit as an SA thanks for making such a nice portable product. Edited by: theamberco on Oct 17, 2014 2:55 PM

A brie response to get you started. Check out the frequency-mask trigger. The mask or limit line in playback recording allows you only record the traces that exceed your limit, so that minimizes how much data you record.

You can't use two USB sticks, though you can use one larger one or an SD card with lots of capacity. You can change the # of points or how often you save the data. You can store a lot of data on 8 Gbytes. I think one USB stick will be enough.

You can play back the data in other formats other than what you recorded, so even if you record a simple trace, you can play back in waterfall format.

Here is also a response to another customer .... not exactly your question, but perhpas there are some useful tidbits for you here:

"On peak or dropout detection… this is essentially the primary/easiest way to reduce the amount of data that one needs to record and later sift thru. { the more advanced/difficult method is to use FrequencyMaskTrigger }.

Without data reduction, the recording captures every measurement trace. This gets everything but consumes the most memory. The simplest way to catch PEAKS or PITS (dropouts) while reducing the data, is to use the “Record Interval” parameter, along with a “Record Source” set to one of the Traces that is in MAX HOLD (or Min Hold if looking for dropouts).

For Example, set Trace2 to State MaxHold (Traces menu, select Trace number 2, set State to MaxHold) Then, in the RecordPlayback RecordConfiguration menu… set Record Source to Trace2 Then adjust the Record Interval to some number of seconds (eg 10 seconds, or 60 seconds)… this determines the data reduction rate.

Now, during Recording, the Trace2 MAX HOLD of all traces within the time interval (eg 60 seconds) will be stored away every 60 seconds, and as each trace is stored, the MaxHold on Trace2 will automatically RESET so that the next 60 seconds gets fresh data. Now the data has been reduced significantly, but the user still is capturing the largest signals to occur within each 60 second interval, so they won’t miss the PEAKs even though they are storing fewer traces.

A MIN HOLD situation should be analogous to see if some signal energy ever DROPS OUT during that interval.

In Summary… I could see this customer setting the “Record Time” to 12 hours, but the “Record Interval” to some number of seconds… and use such a MAX or MIN setup (can’t record both at the same time unfortunately) to reduce the data and still log the PEAK/PIT signal transmissions over the entire time period.

To take this scenario to a more ADVANCED level… would be to use Frequency Mask Trigger. With that, you can setup everything as before (if you want), but know that the Recording will only occur when a certain MASK is triggered (amplitude levels trip the FMT limit line which is setup). Each time the Limit is Tripped, the “Segment Count” quantity of traces will be recorded. The Advanced setup is really just another way to further reduce the data, which might not be necessary, and could just add more confusion… unless the user is truly only interested in seeing signals “above or below” certain MASK thresholds."